HURRIYET- Columnist Ferai Tinc comments on recent political developments concerning Turkish-EU relations and Turkey’s Nov. 3 elections. A summary of her column is as follows:
The European Union has recently adopted so ambiguous an attitude on Turkey that listening to their official statements, one can reach diametrically opposed conclusions on just what these pronouncements mean. The same holds true for what European Commission Chairman Romano Prodi said yesterday. Prodi contended, on the one hand, that the EU should continue to encourage Turkey in implementing its political reforms, and that it should even go beyond that and take further steps towards Turkey’s membership. But on the other hand, he underlined that he didn’t think that the commission would set a date at December’s Copenhagen summit for Turkey’s accession talks. Of course, Turkey is also responsible in part for the EU’s ambiguous, not to say ambivalent, attitude.
Seen from the outside, Turkey is at crossroads. And the path it will choose for itself is unclear to many observers. The Justice and Development Party (AKP), which the polls indicate is the most likely winner in November’s elections, has been flip-flopping since the day it hit the campaign trial. The very same figures who realized that certain mistakes made in the past had put Turkey through dire political straits, and thus parted ways with the Felicity Party (SP), are now flirting with creating new tensions. Just take a look at what AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan is trying to do. He is well aware that playing the ‘victim of the political system’ card works quite well in attracting votes, while he also pushes the law to the limits in carrying out his campaign. What about his shaky stance on the headscarf issue? Erdogan reiterates at every occasion that his party will lift ‘all the bans’ through amending the Constitution if the AKP comes to power. What exactly are those bans? No one knows. Or, are these promises some sort of coded messages to the AKP’s potential voters? Again, this is unclear. Maybe in resorting to such tactics Erdogan is trying to appeal to the SP’s grassroots. Whatever his ambitions, he is serving one thing: Uncertainty. Maybe he’ll just forget what he promised when he comes to power, or maybe not.
Is certainty possible with so many ‘maybe’s in the air? Turkey is a country with an unknown destination. So is it fair to expect an unambiguous attitude from the EU?
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION